Filling the NaNo Void

Okay. NaNoWriMo has been over for almost two weeks now and how much writing are you doing? Are you writing every day? Or has your word count since November 30th dwindled to an embarrassingly low daily average?  If your daily writing pattern has changed back to a not-very-inspiring normal, I’m betting you are not alone. It’s hard to keep going when such a great incentive has run its course.

I have a solution, but here’s a little background first. I’m part of a small writers’ group that meets once a month and during July this year, we set ourselves a challenge of writing every day. We kept our personal goals to ourselves, but we let each other know by the end of the day (and sometimes very close to midnight) that we had reached our goals by sending an e-mail with the word “done” in the subject line. The idea came from an article that I read in a writers’ magazine. An author said that this is how her writing group works every day.

For the month of July we met our goals, did lots of writing, and enjoyed reaching our “dones.” However, in August most of us went back to our everything-else-is-more-important-than-writing modes and … well you can imagine the rest.

If you’re missing NaNoWriMo and would like an incentive to get some writing “done,” I’m proposing a Twitter hashtag #ididthewriting. You set your own writing goal. It may be as simple as just thinking about the book and doing some brainstorming. It might be 500 words a day until the chapter is done. And you are free to adapt the goal to your life and writing needs at the moment and to not tell anyone what it is.

The purpose is to give yourself a daily reminder that you are a writer and to honour that by doing something writerly every day. If  you’re not on Twitter, post a “done” comment on my blog page or on an email to me at wright underscore writer at hotmail dot com. Now’s the time to think about what you want to do with your writing life and join me at #ididthewriting.

1 thought on “Filling the NaNo Void”

  1. This is a great idea! Since I finished NaNo I’ve gone back and started revising a different ms, but once I get back to writing again I know my word count will be pitiful compared to November’s frenzy. I might give this a try. Thanks!

    Reply

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